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The historic insistence on quotas in the federal cabinet — the majority must always be male — has finally been overturned. Half the cabinet will be female, as one would expect in a Liberal caucus filled with talented people. But why is this happening? It’s because we finally have a prime minister who is a friend to women.

I generally oppose quotas. But if the question doesn’t arise any longer in federal politics, it does elsewhere. The assumption by many male (and some female) columnists — a job category as overpopulated by men as policing or long-distance trucking — is that an evenly gendered cabinet is automatically less meritorious than one that is mostly male.

What this shows is stupidity, yes, but also the great pull of human history. Women and girls have always been lesser, including to each other, and women treating other women well is feminism’s next challenge. If the human race lasts another millennium, will we have changed much? Darwin thought not.

Smart commentators say cabinet choices are not based on merit alone but on home province and language, Laura Payton of Maclean’s pointing out that if cabinet were merit-based, the lovely Julian Fantino would not have held three, yes, three, cabinet posts. Those who complain about women being over-promoted are emitting the eternal howl of the tiny child, “Not fair!”.

Take BuzzFeed Canada writer Scaachi Koul’s experience on a Sunday night panel on CBC’s The National discussing cabinet equity. She talked with Jonathan Kay, the editor in charge of the toxic soup that is The Walrus magazine, and commentator Tasha Kheiriddin, whom I know and like. Both opinionated for the National Post, a bewildering newspaper that sealed its circulation fate by basing its identity on disliking groups, specifically women, Muslims, farmers, hamsters, fat people, oh name a contingent it ever smiled on. I do think a newspaper should be reasonably cheerful.

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So there was Koul, an intelligent young woman who showed up for the same reason I used to: urging from lovely man in house, feeling that one should step up for whatever cause, etc. I don’t know that writers — and Koul is a clever and funny one — ever feel comfortable arguing on TV, especially with people who do it for a living. There’s something thin and watery about such discussions. They leave one in despair.

It was the usual thing, being surrounded and out-talked. After the program, Koul, who was already recovering from illness, vomited outside the CBC building and sobbed from uncertainty about her performance. She cried at work the next day after people on Twitter deplored the “all-white” panel as well as her having had an opinion while female. Koul is fierce on Twitter herself but had never suffered this level of monstering. In response to Koul tweeting “I’m not mixed-race and I’m not white,” a female African-American activist replied, “You have white privilege written all over your skin tone,” basically the same remark I got from a cab driver the other night, to our mutual pain.

Koul’s parents are both South Asian and she grew up in Calgary where it was not always comfortable for her. Whatever a woman is, whenever she speaks up she is never quite ... right. She’s too young, too old, too pale, not ethnic enough, too pretty or well-dressed, not serious, too ponderous, too standard, not representative of a category. Men simply exist.

As for quotas, I write here after explicitly breaking a quota set by a previous editor, departed and not missed, who told me on my first day in 2010 that he allowed only one woman on the page and he already had one. Perhaps I might fit into another category, I suggested. I am of mixed race (late father from India, beloved mother Scottish) and occasionally feel obliged to remind people of that. As to what he said in response, you don’t want to know.

Merit is a matter of opinion. It’s like looking at someone’s necklace and saying “Is that real gold?” Well, it’s a golden colour. Did a cabinet minister get there on merit rather than money and social climbing? I don’t come from money, my education was matte rather than shiny, and I have the social connections of a cobbler in a cave. All writers are Geppettos, carving toys at night for pennies.

Still here I sit, merrily typing away, possibly without merit. Who gets Finance? Who gets Justice? Life is unfair.

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